5 Best Strategies to Promote Your ICO

The most difficult part of any ICO project is raising the necessary capital to fully develop your business. If you did not need excess capital, then you would not be doing an ICO (Initial Coin Offering). The ICO is very similar in theory to an IPO (Initial Public Offering) but it quicker and dramatically costs less. ICO has seemed to gotten a bad reputation during the past year as not people are talking about STO (Secuity Token Offerings) or UTO (Utility Token Offerings). They are structured differently for SEC compliance but the marketing is essentially the same. We have advised projects during their ICO marketing process and it can be a very rewarding process. Right now, the competition is intense for attracting investment within the ICO space. Here is a list of the best strategies to promote your ICO.

1. Creation of White Papers and Marketing Materials

Bitcoin’s 9 page white paper set precedent for ICOs to create their own similar documentation to help describe their project. It is not a legal requirement but is certainly a best practice. White papers now help investors to know what the project is, how much investment is needed, where the money will be going and who is involved in the team. A white paper and basic investment deck is an inexpensive way to gauge interest in your project before you hire attorneys and other professionals to fully develop and promote your ICO.

2. Announcement of ICO

After creating all necessary marketing material and hiring legal professionals needed such as highly experienced securities attorney, it is now time to officially announce your ICO. There are dozens of websites that specialize in announcing your ICO. You can also uses professional news release services such as PRWeb or listing websites and blogs in the blockchain community.

3. Bounty Campaigns

Bounty campaigns are awesome if you are short of cash and need more development of your project. A bounty campaign allows individual to complete tasks you need to get accomplished such as coding, marketing, translations, etc. and you pay them in your future token. This allows the general public to help ICOs by essentially putting in sweat equity.

4. Paid Marketing & Advertisement

In order to effectively raise capital, you have to spend investment upfront to promote your ICO through press releases, paid advertisement, Google AdWords, crypto related websites, sponsoring conferences, international promotional roadshows, etc. This is one of the most important steps because the true promotion of the ICO can only reach as many users as possible if you know how to efficiently market your ICO. A lot of websites such as Facebook and Instagram have banned crypto related ads but there are many great websites that you can focus on that are very specific to the cryptocurrency space. I think sponsoring conferences or securing exhibitor space is required if you want your project to truly succeed. People and professionals within the crypto/blockchain space need to have heard about your ICO because word of mouth is very powerful. More projects are now marketing overseas and organizing road shows to help promote their ICO.

5. Build a Community

Every great ICO has a large and powerful community around the project that is very passionate and wants the ICO to succeed. Communities are built from the ground up such as crypto themed forums, Telegram groups, Discord channels and websites like Reddit, Medium, Linkedin. The content created from executives, advisors, social media influencers can be launched through the community to help grow the belief of the project and influence others to join the movement. It is important to stay active and have valuable community managers than really know the project.

6. Attend Events and Conferences

There are many blockchain and cryptocurrency conferences around the world, showcase your project at these conferences can be very beneficial as social media and industry news partners are often attending such events. Words can go around very quickly. Many events welcome company executives to do ICO pitch, sponsorship such events can be a good idea for more exposure.